CASH anxious over deal with Barito

CASH anxious over deal with Barito

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Malaysia's Construction and Supplies House Bhd. (CASH) will decide within a week or two whether to submit fresh proposals to authorities here for a timber alliance with Indonesia's PT Barito Pacific Timber, company officials said.

Anxious over the long waiting period for Malaysia's Securities Commission to approve its revised bid submitted in December, CASH managing director Joseph Ambrose Lee said it was time for the next course of action.

"We did not anticipate the long waiting period," Lee was quoted by Bernama news agency as saying late Saturday after a shareholders meeting in Labuan, off Malaysia's eastern Sabah state.

CASH had expressed optimism in December over its revised proposal with Barito and there was speculation the deal would be approved by the commission by the first quarter of this year.

The deal, involving a scaled-down proposal for a reverse takeover of CASH by Barito, was expected to involve the exchange of timber assets and shares worth 1.7 billion ringgit (680,000 million dollars), CASH company officials had said.

Under the new proposal, Barito head Prajogo Pangestu was expected to end up with just over 50 percent of CASH.

Company officials had said the Indonesian tycoon had "more or less agreed" to the revised deal, but Malaysian and Indonesian authorities would have the final say.

The revised proposal was made after an earlier bid involving a 2. 5-billion- ringgit deal failed.

The first proposal rejected earlier last year would have given Barito a 70-percent stake in CASH, making that firm the largest timber player in the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange.

That idea was axed by Malaysia's Securities Commission in June. Analysts had said the rejection reflected Malaysia's unease over such a large foreign stake in a local listed company. CASH share price closed eight sen higher at 4.38 ringgit Friday.